I'm a long time member, but I've made a new account as I don't remember the old one.

I've had a silent PC driving the television in the living room for many years, and it's the primary source of entertainment in that room. It's also my main PC, therefore I have a desk in the living room. This works well for a person who lives alone, but it looks like those days are gradually drawing to a close. I need to figure out a way to sit upright, type, and mouse in the living room, without having a desk in the living room.

I've thought about wall-mounting a keyboard + mouse tray, building a pull-out tray for the coffee table, or stowing a lap desk in arm of the couch. What kind of solutions have you found to this problem?

This isn't cheap - but have you considered getting an ultrabook?

If what you require is a keyboard, mouse and so on combination, a 2010 model macbook air is a decent solution. The trackpad is big, it weighs about as much as a mechanical keyboard and has a similar footprint, and the operation is quiet enough that it can generally be considered silent. The battery will last you around 4 hours. The trackpad is thoroughly integrated in the OS, meaning you will be able to do most common tasks considerably easier than with a trackpad under windows.

If that isn't an acceptable solution, I think the most common alternative is using a tablet or smartphone as the input device for a living room pc - or failing that, something like a logitech dinovo edge, which is a wireless bluetooth media keyboard.

I don't think there's any other common alternatives...

How about using something like this...

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/General-Tech/Nerdytec-COUCHMASTER-Premium-Video-Review-Game-Comfort



Found the following article, it's more aimed towards gaming from the couch, but most of the info and links are still relevant.
http://www.tested.com/tech/pcs/456792-living-room-pc-part-2-keyboard-and-mouse-problem/

I used to just have a laptop on a cutting board in the living room, but I wanted a faster machine and didn't want to buy another laptop. But I did have a couple other fast machines, so I got the longest monitor arm I could find, clamped it onto my end table, and got that working. Then I thought, hey, I can get a windows and a linux machine out here, see if I can really transition to linux full time. So I got a kvm, and now I have two machines in the living room. I have a wireless keyboard and wireless trackball to control both machines, and it's not a bad setup. Here's how it looks. Oops, looks like the board is giving me a 'Sorry, the board attachment quota has been reached.' message, I'll see if I can upload it later.

I think the best solution is a separate laptop. More flexible and made for your purpose.

But one possibility for light use is the Logitech K400r. For a 400 gram plastic keyboard, it's pretty good.